It was February 20, 2020, one month before Covid-19 sent us into what felt like an indefinite lockdown. Geoffrey and I visited my daughter, Gathegu, and her family in the suburbs of Atlanta. It was a dreary, cold, and rainy winter day. Inside their newly renovated living room, we settled in for a relaxing visit with the family. We enjoyed the grandkids who were whirling around the house while we sipped on cups of hot Kenyan tea and ate a midday meal. The family dog, Rocket, was excited to have guests. The house was vibrant and full of life in the stillness of late winter.
My daughter, Gathegu, invited us to visit her garden. She was excited to show us the progress she made and the chicken coop her family built, including the kids. She helped me slip on her garden boots while she joked that it was her turn to help me put on my shoes. She gave me a small black umbrella and held my hand as we walked down the walkway beside the house, squeezing tighter as we slowly made our way down the concrete sloped walkway down to the driveway. She was concerned that I might fall.
We turned left toward the side gate that leads to the backyard. The ground was muddy and saturated with rain. We made our way to the garden. We walked around harvesting vegetables for me to take home. After our visit was over, I was delighted to return home with a bag of organic greens from their family garden.
We had no idea that we would be rushed into hiding without knowing what would come of us, our family, and our communities here and abroad. It has been an arduous year full of ups and downs. My husband and I moved into a new home that our children renovated throughout the pandemic. Everyone breathed easier knowing we were completely isolated and close to family in the city.
It is now the middle of March 2021. We haven’t left our home except for doctor visits. The winter is fading and ushering a warm early spring. My daughter is helping me put in a new garden at our home. She has already planted fruit trees that she randomly surprises me with on her visits. I think back to what I was doing a year ago before the pandemic hit and the world went into lockdown, and the possibility of seeing my family became dismal. I have held onto the memory of the last family visit to my daughter’s home and the stroll to her garden. We are thankful for God’s care during an uncertain year. We are grateful for the millions of lives saved, and the immense loss of life saddens us.
Two weeks ago, our daughter Gathegu took us to get our first covid-19 vaccine. We return for our final vaccine this week. A year ago, we didn’t know how long it would be before we revisited our grandkids, so I often read a post that my daughter Gathegu wrote on Facebook about our last visit together.
Today, my beautiful and wise mother came to visit me with her new husband. They are so cute together. They laugh, joke, sing praise, tell stories, and listen to a woman preacher in Nakuru on their smartphone. I am still getting accustomed to hearing loud praise when they are in my living room.
Geoffrey is the sweetest man, and I like that he takes things in stride. He adores my mother, and she loves to take care of him. You can bring these Gīkũyũ love birds to America, but you cannot unKikuyu them. What is good for mom is good for him. And truth be told, I could not have it any other way.
Today we sat around just talking about life. I wish I had a video going or recorder. My mother’s shares are so moving and captivating. The Gīkũyũ sayings are so foreign to me.
I used to dream in Gīkũyũ and think in Gīkũyũ, but that is a distant experience. “Please translate or better yet, explain,” I find myself saying over and over. I am on an emotional roller coaster trying to follow along. I want to cry for her pain, but she is laughing, and I want to laugh from naivety, but she is sad. Do you know a mother like her? She has a sharp mind and impeccable memory. I can’t even remember to turn off the stove or how old I am.
She effortlessly weaves her life narrative like a Kīondo-from precolonial Kenya what she remembers about gran Cũcũ, my cure and her difficult childhood with detained parents, a national experience shared by many in colonial Kenya, to post-colonial Kenya through the war of independence, through high school and higher ed, meeting and marrying my father, the birth of four children in Kenya and one in America, all the way to where we sit together with her current husband. I am along for the journey. I never want her to stop sharing. This is what Cũcũ and Guka do. Tea and stories. I get to know her as a human being, not as my mother.
I haven’t called Geoffrey’s dad, but he feels like a wonderful husband to my mother. My mom insists that it is tradition to call him baba. I guess I have it that my father finished his job raising me before he died. Geoffrey is special, and he has a comforting smile. I can learn from him too.
I love to watch how they gently help each other and how they laugh at me for saying silly things or for butchering Gīkũyũ or defying their Gīkũyũ sensibilities with my crass American way of being. I can be difficult and defiant. Have you met my father?
They never make me feel wrong or like they are laughing at me or disrespecting me for who I am due to my own experiences of losing my culture in America and for my Kenyan/American sensibilities. We are laughing together because deep down, they know I am mostly jokingly challenging their traditional expectations. They know my southern brain cannot force my tongue to say forgotten Gīkũyũ words, and my body can’t perform forgotten traditions. I know the traditions, and I hear the language, but the Gīkũyũ words never effortlessly flow from my mouth.
I acquiescence to all their requests. After all, I am a Gīkũyũ daughter, and I am bound by traditions to serve only Kenyan tea, make lunch, and serve guests. Well, today, I only had one Kenyan teabag, so I had to put an American Lipton teabag. Half American and half Kenyan ( tea). Adapted just like me. That is who I am. My mother accepts my integrated tea with a little spoon of humor. That is who she is.
On her last visit, I used our small American cups to serve her Kenyan tea. Of course, she laughed at me. I served her husband a tiny cup of tea. She said to me, “Mũthuri ndanyuaga cai na gakombe kanini getagũwo wanjīka atia. Anyuaga na kīrīa gītagũwo onehũ (a man does not drink from a small cup. He drinks from a good sizeable cup or a mug.” Gīkũyũ saying correct with wisdom. She requested larger cups for the next time. They were lucky that I made one small pot of tea that made several small servings of tea. We laughed.
Being a Gīkũyũ mom, she had to have the last joke today. When the tea was ready, she said it wasn’t enough to fill their large teacups. I should have told her that is why I never feel good enough. I can’t get this tea ritual right ever in my life. Lol! So, I had the last joke when I offered them the smaller cups. They laughed when I told them there is more with less. It is all about perspective. Lol!
My mother asked me to take her to my home garden. I was surprised and embarrassed that she had never seen our home garden. And, of course, it is overgrown with weeds in winter. I don’t get out there much in the cold weather.
I gave her my garden boots. I held her hand all the way down the driveway and around to the back of the house. It had been raining, and she was afraid to fall. Sometimes, I am caught by surprise by her age and fragility. Our roles are reversing. She held my hand once upon a time so that I would not fall. Now I get to hold hers.
We walk slowly to the back of the house in the rain-saturated ground. She says in Gīkũyũ, “this soil in the yard isn’t good. The water sits too long on the top.” I smile in agreement. Only a well-seasoned farmer could name the soil without digging. I say, “yes, it is acidic and clayish. And I have to add organic matter.”
As a young girl in colonial times, my mother gardened for white people in Kenya, and then she kept a garden for her family all the way to America. She always makes a point to remind me that she never wants to work the soil again. Her body is too tired from working the soil for other people, but she helps me hang out with her when she comes to my garden.
My mother was there the first time I planted white potatoes. She watched as I carefully dug the holes and gently placed the roots in the soil. When I bent over to cover them, she laughed and said to me, “waru ti mwana (a potato isn’t baby).” Then she planted the potatoes faster than I could’ve imagined possible while she erects. I laughed.
I am grateful for my Gīkũyũ mother, her gentleness, wisdom, and her love for the land. She is that I am. I am grateful today that she gets to enjoy the fruits of her labor. She gets to drink my tea, to eat the food that I have grown with my bare hands, and she gets to take a harvest home to cook for her husband.
That is true Gīkũyũ love y’all.